Matters of Faith: A march for God’s justice

Saturday

Jan 14, 2017 at 2:00 AM

By The Rev. Russell H. Allen

Most people remember three things about Martin Luther King Jr.: His leading of the great civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington; and his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. Some may recall that King was in Memphis to lend support to garbage workers engaged in a bitter strike that had begun on Feb. 12, for which negotiations had broken down. Some may also recall that following King’s assassination, the parties returned to the bargaining table, resolved their differences and settled the strike. As veteran radio broadcaster Paul Harvey might have said: “That is the story. Now here is part of the rest of the story.”

I first met William “Bill” Dimmick in the mid-1970s, following his election as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan, and some of his characteristics still stand out in my memory. He was short, barely 5-feet tall. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and a sly smile and a twinkle in his eye whenever he employed it. He was still a Southern gentleman, even though by this time he had lived in the North for several years. In time, I learned he possessed a faith and a moral stature that exceeded his physical presence, traits that became evident in the days following the King assassination.

Born in Paducah, Kentucky, and educated at Berea College and Yale Divinity School, Dimmick served a church in Nashville, Tennessee, before being called in 1960 to St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis, where he served first as canon and then as dean. St. Mary’s was religiously, physically (in terms of its buildings and location) and socially prominent in Memphis. The mayor, several top officials and many of the city’s elite were members of its congregation.

Nevertheless, the prolonged garbage workers’ strike was never an issue in the liturgy, sermons or pastoral ministry of the cathedral or of its dean, because, as Dimmick explained to me, it was contrary to Southern social etiquette to address such a contentious matter in that context. Whatever his personal feelings may have been, Dimmick’s belief in the Southern social ethos, and his identity as a Southern gentleman, meant that a disruptive strike could not be allowed to effect the cathedral congregation or its ministry.

That is, until those fateful shots rang out, leaving King dead on a motel balcony. Here is the story of what happened next, pretty much as Dimmick related it to me years later:

The morning after King’s death, Dean Dimmick invited the mostly white Memphis Ministers Association – comprised of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergy – to meet at St. Mary’s Cathedral. During the meeting, the group voted to act in response to King’s assassination the night before. There were about 250 clergy present, when at the stroke of noon, the main cathedral doors opened and Dimmick stepped out wearing the church’s finest vestments and carrying its processional cross. The cross was heavy, and, with a twinkle in his eye, Dimmick asked his friend Rabbi James Wax of Temple Israel if he would hold it for him. Knowing Bill was joking, Wax assured him that for years he had tried to get “that guy” off his back, and he was not about to change that now.

Dimmick then lead this group of Memphis clergy, walking two by two in procession, from the cathedral down Poplar Avenue to Memphis City Hall and into the office of Mayor Henry Loeb, a member of the cathedral’s congregation. There, they demanded (Dimmick’s word) that negotiations be resumed and that the strike be ended immediately, fairly and with justice for the garbage workers. Not long afterward, the city and the union returned to the bargaining table, and the strike was settled on April 16.

It is hard to clearly determine how this march influenced the mayor’s decision to resume negotiations. What is known is that roughly half the congregants of St. Mary’s Cathedral terminated their membership as a result, unwilling to forgive Dimmick for breaking the code that held their society together.

Though he would remain dean of St. Mary’s for another five years, Dimmick eventually left the city he had served so well and the South he loved. In 1973, he became the rector of an Episcopal church in Southport, Connecticut, before being elected a bishop in northern Michigan. After he left Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, he served as acting dean of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, and then as associate bishop, first in the Diocese of Minnesota and then in Arkansas, just before his death in October 1984.

Dimmick’s unexpected public stance on an issue of great social significance and contention – leading the clergy march that called on the mayor to end the strike –reflected the difficult personal faith choice of placing God’s justice above his beloved South and its social assumptions. A choice that eventually led Dimmick to leave his home in the South to become an exile for the same Gospel for which King labored and died.

The Rev. Allen is a retired Episcopal parish rector and college chaplain who most recently served for 10 years as pastoral associate at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church of Osterville. He can be reached at revrussallen@comcast.net.

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This faith and spirituality column on topical subjects is written by members of Cape Cod’s clerical community. Clergy of all faiths are welcome to contribute. To arrange to be a guest columnist, call Wendy Lopata at 508-862-1183.

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